Mindshare sets out its stall in India for international clients
Everyone knows the pluses of India: vast population, superb low-cost workforce, and everyone speaks English. Now WPP agency Mindshare is broadening the scope of its existing mobile practice in Mumbai to service global clients.
Reaching out from India
Mindshare has had a mobile team in Mumbai since 2007, says AdAge. This team handles 55% of mobile ad campaigns in India itself and also runs campaigns elsewhere in Asia.
India has " off-the-charts mobile usage," says the magazine.. In December there were 894 million mobile subscribers in the country, second only to China
Mindshare decided they could help clients outside the region to scale their mobile offerings, "since executing a mobile campaign in India can be one-third the price of similar work in the U.S. or Europe."
"We're letting all of our global clients access this team to produce high-quality work at a lower cost," Norm Johnston, Mindshare's global digital leader, told AdAge.
Five global clients are already interested . The 20-person mobile team in Mumbai, which includes developers and graphic designers, could potentially double in the next year, he says.
He added, "As the need for more mobile content increases dramatically, it becomes cost-prohibitive to do it locally."
The repositioned Mumbai team intends to have a full-service offering and serve as a production hub for HTML5 content, mobile apps, websites and ad units, said AdAge.
Fellow WPP agency Ogilvy & Mather has had a digital hub in Bangalore since late 2007, originally for its global Lenovo account. It now has two other global clients and 180 employees, about 10% of them expats from countries like England, France, Australia and Cameroon.